HYPERTENSION AND THE GUT MICROBIOME: USING GUT MICROBES TO REDUCE BLOOD PRESSURE
Professor Francine Marques
Professor of Genetics and Genomics
Monash University, Victoria, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE (Filmed in Clayton, Victoria | December 2024)
Professor Francine Marques is an National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leader, Viertel Charitable Foundation, and National Heart Foundation Fellow.
She leads the Hypertension Research Laboratory at Monash University and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Nature Reviews Cardiology, Nature Medicine, Nature Cardiovascular Research, and Circulation.
As a researcher Professor Marques has secured over $10 million in competitive funding as a principal investigator. She has won 31 awards, including the 2019 American Heart Association Hypertension Council Goldblatt Award, the 2020 High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia and 2021 International Society of Hypertension Mid-Career Awards, the 2021 Australian Academy of Science Gottschalk Medal, and the 2024 Australian Society of Medical Research Peter Doherty Leading Light Award, and was a finalist for 12 awards, including the Eureka Prize Emerging Leader in Science.
Her research team aims to build exceptional scientists that help improve cardiovascular health, using translational approaches to lower blood pressure via the gut microbiome. Professor Marques is also passionate about equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and helping communities change the current culture of research.
She has led research identifying intrinsic equity issues in the cardiovascular research community in Australia (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32839116/), followed by research to find solutions for these issues (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35577952/), resulting in the 2021 Women’s Agenda Emerging Leader in STEM award.
Outside work, Francine enjoys baking, travelling, spending time with family, friends and her dogs, and reading books.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4920-9991
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Brain ageing, dementia and psychiatric disorders
Professor Perminder Sachdev graduated from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, in 1978 and completed his MD in Psychiatry there in 1983. Following time in New Zealand, he relocated to Australia, where he completed psychiatric training and a PhD at UNSW in 1991. His doctoral work examined ethnopsychological concepts in Māori culture. His early research focused on drug-induced movement disorders, including akathisia, tardive dyskinesia and neuroleptic malignant syndrome, while his later work has centred on dementia and pre-dementia syndromes, particularly neuroimaging, biomarkers and risk factors.
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Impact of Leukaemia Foundation’s Research Funding into Blood Cancer
Bill Stavreski is the Head of Research at the Leukaemia Foundation who talks about the research impact in recent years. The Foundation itself marks its 25th anniversary in 2025, having funded a wide range of health and medical research since 2000. With a focus on basic science, health services research, treatment, and care, the organisation has invested nearly $90 million (adjusted in current dollars terms) in approximately 370 research grants over the years.
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Pathogenicity, modelling & treatment of inherited retinal Stargardt disease
Dr Di Huang is a Research Associate at the Lions Eye Institute (LEI), working with A/Professor Fred Chen and Dr Sam McLenachan. Her research focuses on developing a robust platform of retinal pigment epithelium cells and retinal organoids derived from patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells to model inherited retinal diseases, particularly Stargardt disease (STGD1).
